Gold Label 517e Blacktop
Gold Label Collection Launch Recap
Launched in January 2025, Taylor’s Gold Label Collection introduced a rounder, warmer, more robust flavor of acoustic tone inspired by an older, more traditional acoustic sound — a dramatically different sonic personality from anything previously crafted by Taylor.
Among the key tone-shaping design features were a new Super Auditorium body style, new bracing architecture, and Taylor’s patented new long-tenon Action Control Neck.
Together, the design elements create a voice rich with oldschool character, coupled with modern playability refinements that extend Taylor’s legacy of exceptional playability.
The guitars impressed players and reviewers — Guitar Player’s Jimmy Leslie called the Gold Label 814e "the most remarkable Taylor I’ve reviewed in nearly a decade."
Introducing the Gold Label Grand Pacific : Deeper Body, Deeper Sound
Andy Powers has reimagined his Grand Pacific shape with a deeper-bodied design for the Gold Label Collection — it’s 3/8-inch deeper (5-inch body depth at the soundhole).
The extra depth gives the guitar extra "lung capacity" and a deeper resonant frequency. This translates into more low-end expansiveness, power and projection — the guitar has more sonic push toward an audience
or a microphone, yet with pleasing musical clarity.
Even the treble notes have enhanced warmth and depth.
Compared to the Gold Label Super Auditorium, the curves and depth of the Grand Pacific produce even
more volume and tonal depth. Its voice is earthy, honest and uncomplicated — like sonic comfort food. A reliable acoustic workhorse — both seasoned and soulful.
Models
Six Grand Pacific models join the collection (Gold Label 517e and Gold Label 717e). Choose between two traditional tonewoods: Indian rosewood or mahogany, each coupled with a torrefied Sitka spruce top. Top finish options include natural, sunburst and blacktop.
The Taylor Action Control Neck: The Gold Standard of Neck Adjustability
Exclusive to the Gold Label Collection, our new neck design combines the tonal benefits of a long-tenon neck joint with easy neck angle micro-adjustability, allowing the string height (action) to be tweaked with unprecedented ease and precision.
• Long-Tenon Neck Joint:
The long tenon extends deeper into the guitar body and, together with the heel structure, enhances the wood coupling to produce greater low-end resonance and a sound comparable to traditional neck designs.
• Precise Action Control:
Like Taylor’s existing neck, the neck joint is glueless, but instead of incorporating tapered shims to calibrate the neck angle, the design is shimless.
The string height can be adjusted literally in seconds by using a quarter-inch nut driver (or standard truss rod wrench) on a bolt in the neck block, accessible inside the soundhole. Neither the neck nor the strings need to be removed to make adjustments. The design serves players by allowing them to adjust their string height for different playing styles, applications or climate conditions as often as they like.
Specifications
Body
- Back and Sides: Mahogany
- Top: Torrefied Spruce
- Finish: Gloss Body
Neck
- Neck: Mahogany
- Fretboard: West African Crelicam Ebony
- Nut Width: 1-3/4" - 44.45 mm
- Scale Length: 25-1/2" - 647.7 mm
- Bridge: Honduran Rosewood "Curve Wing"
- Bridge Pins: Indian Rosewood
- Nut: TUSQ
- Saddle: Micarta
- Finish: Satin Neck
Hardware
- Bracing: Fanned V-Class
- Tuning Machines: Taylor Nickel
Electronics
- Electronics: LR Baggs Element VTC
Miscellaneous
- Strings: D’Addario XS Coated Phosphor Bronze Light
- Guitar Case: Taylor Deluxe Hardshell Case, "British Cocoa" Vinyl Exterior
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